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By Blaine P. Friedlander Jr.

In the past, wine made from New York state fruit, like
strawberries, apples, cherries and peaches, and vegetables, like rhubarb, has been considered the ugly
step-child of winemaking. That was then.

This is now: Thanks to new Cornell research, full, robust-flavor fruit or vegetable wines could
become available on a wider basis. (The late) Robert Kime, food science pilot plant
manager at Cornell's New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, N.Y., believes he has found
the alcohol-content threshold that separates fine fruit wine from cheap, inferior wine -- what the British call
"plonk."

"It's a fine line," said Kime, explaining that when winemakers, commercial and domestic, allow
the fruit-fermentation process to exceed an alcohol content of 10.5 percent, the wine's flavor can be ruined. Kime,
who has worked with a number of wineries in the New York Finger Lakes region, notes that winemakers invariably
sacrifice flavor by making fruit wine with the same alcohol content as wine made from grapes.

Grape wine can have an alcohol content as high as 11 or 12 percent and still be excellent.
However, Kime said, alcohol is a solvent that can react with and dissolve flavor compounds in other fruits and
vegetables when it reaches levels of 11 percent or higher.

"Higher alcohol content vaporizes the flavors, and they escape through the bubbler overnight," he
said.

To prevent fruit wine from becoming tasteless or cloying, Kime suggests stopping the fermentation
cold. When the fermenting fruit or vegetables reach about 10.5 percent alcohol, he halts fermentation by
refrigeration at 28 degrees Fahrenheit.

Search ale yeast for a 10% alcohol tolerance yeast for your fruit wines. You will be glad you
did.